


The New Frontier

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Hairspray (2007)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-01
Updated: 2008-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Link and Tracy's big Hollywood success story goes. a little bit off track.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Frontier

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Michelle

 

 

"Stop singing!" Frankie Finkelstein, best gosh darn agent in Hollywood, rubbed at his face. He waited for the two Baltimore scrubs to stop their heartfelt duet before he continued. "We've got a problem, here."

"Golly, I don't know what that could be," Tracy Turnblad said once her crescendo had been cut off abruptly. "I'm so happy Seaweed's in town!" And she smiled.

Link Larkin stared nervously at the wall and rolled a cigarette between his fingers, back and forth and back. Frankie'd got him started on them as soon as he'd been signed. Gotta stay slim, baby, gotta stay slim! Only room for one novelty act in this couple! Not that he'd ever tell her that to her face. She's a nice girl. Little dim, but a nice girl. And an ass that won't quit even on Sunday and statutory holidays.

"You know what I'm talking about, though, don't you? Link. My main man, my star, my numero uno act." He fought down the urge to detail the career of Frankie Finkelstein, Agent to the Stars, in song. Damn, it'd gotten weird around these parts since Baltimore came to town.

Link shrunk down more into his chair at the questioning. For once, he didn't look ready to start tapping his toes.

"Yeah, well: listen up, kiddies. Because Frankie Finkelstein-"

"Why do you always say your full name?" Tracy asked innocently.

He ignored her. "Because Frankie Finkelstein didn't get his gold-veined mirrors and his 13-inch color television and his wall-to-wall carpeting by letting his acts throw their careers away. You hear me?"

"I hear you, Frankie," Link muttered. He rolled his eyes when silence greeted him. "Frankie Finkelstein."

"Good boy. Smoke your cigarette."

Link puffed away obligingly, right up until the point when Frankie studied him, noted the position of his mouth, the position of the cigarette, and promptly batted it out of his hands. Then he promptly stomped out the burning spot that began to smolder on his carpet. Damn! This was the best acrylic fiber they'd had in the store!

"Stop singing!" he barked when Tracy began some admittedly catchy little ditty where she rhymed "run" with "9-1-1."

Frankie took a deep, long breath, sat back down, and folded his hands on his knees. Then he took more deep breaths until he was ready to continue. "So, Link. We need to figure out how we're going to sell this to the press. Who we gonna blame, right? Who we gonna sue?"

"We're not suing anyone," Link protested and tapped the box against his palm until a fresh cigarette slid out.

Frankie watched him light the fresh cig and bring up for a long, deep draw. "Better that than all of Hollywood talking about how you've always gotta be putting something in your mouth."

Link froze for a moment, then slowly rested the cigarette in the closest of the three amber glass ashtrays. He didn't bring it back with him when he retrieved his hand.

"Exactly. And now you see why I have a burnt spot in my carpet."

Tracy's brows had been getting progressively more furrowed during the entire conversation. "Am I missing out on something? I really feel like I'm missing something, here, and it makes it really hard to-"

"Stop singing!" he ordered her preemptively.

Disgruntled, she slumped back in her chair.

Link began, "Look, Frankie-oh, for God's sake, Frankie Finkelstein!"

Tracy gasped. "Link!" She leaned forward, an urgent and insistent look on her face. "Don't aketay the ordslay amenay in ainvay."

"Got that out of your system?" Frankie asked after Link had let out a frustrated yell. "Good. Because we need you to have a clear head while we plan our attack. Our counter-offensive. Our grand military strategy."

"Okay," Tracy insisted. "Okay, you two need to stop leaving me out of the loop. Because I already started off worried, and I'm getting more worried the more you talk around me instead of just talking to me. So I really need to be told what's going on, because _now_ it's starting to sound like Link's getting drafted and I know that can't be right... right?" Worry crested her face.

Frankie waved at the air, hopefully conveying how easily he could brush aside those fears. "We're not talking guns, Tracy, my sweet little creampuff. Your boy Link here probably couldn't even lift one."

"Hey! This day is already bad enough!"

"You've got scrawny arms, Larkin. Deal with it. Besides, 'drafting.' What 'drafting.' The war'll be over by next week. No, I'm afraid we've got ourselves a real quagmire to deal with, all thanks to that little dinner you and your good friend Seaweed had last week. And all those photographs leading to all the rumors."

Tracy gasped, both hands fluttering dramatically over her mouth. Then she clenched her fists at her sides and demanded, "Are you saying that the press here is trying to make a big deal out of Link having negro friends?"

"Um..." Link began.

"Eloquent, babe, real eloquent." Frankie leaned in. "No. I'm talking about the photographs of them sitting on the same side of a big table."

"Restaurants can be very noisy. It's easier to talk that way!"

"Wow. You can just be oblivious when you want to be, can't you? And the photograph of this 'Seaweed' reaching to grab a wallet to pay for dinner."

"That was nice of him!" Tracy said.

"...Out of your man Link's pocket," Frankie finished.

"Oh." Her resilience amazed him sometimes, it really did. "That was nice of you, Link, treating him dinner!"

"Yeah," Frankie drawled as he watched Link shift his weight on the chair, this way and that. "And then every photographer there got a shot of them heading off for what looked like dessert. Some nice chocolate and vanilla dessert."

"Geez, you already hardly let him eat at all, he can have dessert on one night when a friend comes to visit-"

"Tracy, please stop," Link begged her, his eyes closed and cheeks red. "Please stop making excuses for me. And just... you need to let it into your mind that I screwed up. Big time. Really, really big time."

Her big doe eyes looked at him with worry, but no comprehension. Link grimaced, shot a desperate glance to Frankie, and then leaned in to whisper into Tracy's ear. Her eyes opened even wider and turned glassy.

"Oh," she managed.

"I am so sorry," Link began.

Frankie snorted. "Yeah." He liked to think the apology was also directed to him; after all, how hard was it going to be to try and put a queer in musicals? Damn, he just couldn't catch a break!

"Oh," Tracy repeated, eyes still glassy. She was apparently caught in some sort of imagined movie on loop in her head, and Link winced every time it seemed to restart and she took one more mental step out of the room.

Abruptly, she sat up straight, got a grin on her face unlike any he had seen on her before, and said cheerfully, "Well, then, why don't you invite him over tonight for dinner? With both of us?"

"What?" Link asked, bewildered.

"What?" Frankie demanded.

Her smile broadened, and Tracy Turnblad's eyebrows bobbed up and down on her forehead. "Integration is the new frontier, right?" 

 


End file.
